#Blogtober 26 - Halloween Bloggery - Misty Early Channel 4 Memories

Who else here has a vague memory from childhood of some weird, forgotten bit of TV?  You know, one of those things where you're not even sure if you was something you actually watched, or if it was something you dreamt up?  Well, for years I've had something like that; I can't be sure of exactly when I saw it, but I was pre-Primary School definitely, so about only 4 or 5 years old.  What makes this thing so vivid was the fact that I only came in at the end of... whatever this show/film was, so I had no context for what was happening.  I remember a kid in a normal suburban house (like mine, to add to the paranoia) being menaced by some huge, amorphous mass of stuff, at one point getting out of a scrape with a He-Man figure, and there being something disturbing about the ending.

That has haunted me for close to three decades now.  Only a couple of years ago did I finally discover what it was, and it's only this week that I finally got a chance to properly rewatch the thing.  What I was half remembering was Under the Bed, a production from 1988 by the Children's Film Unit.  The CFU was a sort of successor to the earlier Children's Film Foundation, with a goal of not just making films for kids, but getting them involved in all steps of the process.  Under the Bed was one that was based on a story by Laura Beaumont and her hubby Bill Oddie.  In fact, Oddie and the other two Goodies turn up towards the end of this one as a trio of binmen.  Now to be honest, this is far from the most even of productions, it does feel like a lot of random skits thrown together to bulk out a fairly simplistic story.  However, the ending where we get to see Heap, the creature formed from the detritus under a girls bed, is quite a bit of fun, and it does have that Goodies cameo.  It's not hard to see why this made such a deep impression on my young mind.  Thankfully, the YouTube channel for Scarred for Life has recently uploaded a copy, for all to enjoy.  What's more, they've let me know where to find quite a few other CFU productions too, so that's something for me to investigate later.

Ah, feels good to resolve this childhood nightmare; I always had a feeling it was something I saw on Channel 4.  I may do some more digging later to see if I can figure out exactly when it was on, and therefore when precisely I saw it.  Whilst I'm on things that scared 3 year old me which I might not have been if I recognised certain comedians back then, I'll wrap up with something I am kicking myself for leaving out of the scary adverts blog.  The old Sugar Puffs adverts, with kids hulking out into Honey Monsters I still find incredibly disturbing to this day, even with Norman Lovett narrating them.  It might be the voices that seal the deal for me, it's like the kids have been possessed.  Also, the fact that back then the Honey Monster design was more uneven, hunchbacked, and bug-eyed than he would later become, so that makes the American Werewolf change these kids go through all the more grotesque.  Enjoy another bit of trauma for me!